‘Watchmen’ Artist Thinks That The HBO Show Could Top The Movie

Zack Snyder’s Watchmen adaptation represented an accomplishment in that it brought a work that was previously believed to be unfilmable to life, and while comic writer Alan Moore notoriously refused to support the film, artist Dave Gibbons has expressed fondness for it. Now, Gibbons thinks that HBO’s upcoming adaptation could top Snyder’s cult classic take on the superhero drama.

Explaining his opinion to Screen Rant, Gibbons noted that he feels the episodic format of a television series is more closely suited to adapt a 12-issue series than a 2.5-hour movie (or 3.5-hour movie if you count the Ultimate Cut) is, since it provides for a greater amount of time to flesh out the characters in the story:

“Whenever Alan [Moore] and I in the past had talked about movies and TV, in a way the TV form with an episodic story, which Watchmen very much was. It was a graphic novel. It was a monthly story. I think that works very well… When we were first commissioned to do the comic book series, we thought, Alan thought that it was going to be a six issue series and then they said to him, “No. It’s got to be 12 issues.” So he had to come up with another six issues worth of material, which is why it’s got the shape that it has which, if you look at it, it’s got an issue of action, an issue of character, an issue of action, and that is really what gives it its character. That its done like that and that we did have space to stretch and obviously something like a TV species would give you space to expand and explore that you haven’t got with a movie, so we always thought it would work better as a TV series than a movie.”

This, of course, is not to knock Snyder’s work, as Gibbons has stated that he definitely was a fan of it. He also mentioned that he liked that Snyder and the other people involved with the 2009 adaptation asked for his input, which he says he’ll be willing to provide for this series:

“The thing with Watchmen is that DC has been very courteous to me and are always giving me the opportunity to be involved. As far as the movie was concerned, I was happy to have as much input as they would give me… I am sure it will be something I will be consulted about and if it was done in the same way as the movie, I would be quite on board. I mean, you have to talk hypotheticals at the moment.”

The project’s showrunner is rumored to be Damon Lindelof (Lost, The Leftovers). Zack Snyder was previously in line to serve as an executive producer, but he dropped his commitments to the series after the death of his daughter in order to spend time with his family. (Snyder also put Joss Whedon in charge of the post-production process on Justice League, which he was directing up until the tragedy happened.) Lindelof has praised Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen and cites the original graphic novel as being a huge influence on his work. Perhaps, then, HBO’s Watchmen adaptation will be 12 episodes long in order to keep in line with Moore’s original story.

Watchmen will air on HBO, but there is neither a cast nor a window for the television series as of yet.